San Francisco Dec 1 (IANS) After a successful trial in the Philippines Twitter is rolling out its data-friendly "Lite" Android version in 24 countries across Asia Africa Europe the Middle East and Latin America.
Available in Google Play Store Twitter "Lite" (under 3MB size) loads quickly on 2G and 3G networks and offers offline support in case users temporarily lose connection.
Just like Facebook Lite it offers a data saver mode to download only the images or videos users want to see.
"In April we launched Twitter Lite a new mobile web experience that minimises data usage loads quicker on slower connections and is more resilient on unreliable mobile networks " wrote Jesar Shah Product Manager at Twitter in a blog post on Friday.
"Since then we ve seen an increase in engagement -- for example tweets sent from Twitter Lite have increased more than 50 per cent " she added.
In September Twitter made it available in the Google Play Store in the Philippines.
"Through on-the-ground user research and Play Store reviews we received a lot of valuable feedback. Based on these positive results we have decided to bring it to more people around the world " Shah said.
Twitter Lite is now available in Algeria Bangladesh Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Ecuador Egypt Israel Kazakhstan Mexico Malaysia Nigeria Nepal Panama Peru Serbia El Salvador South Africa Thailand Tunisia Tanzania and Venezuela.
Twitter Lite is yet to come to India.
The company has 330 million monthly active users 80 per cent of whom are outside the US.
--IANS
na/in
